Fernando Arrabal

Acting

Fernando Arrabal

Born 1932-08-11 · Melilla, España

Fernando Arrabal Terán is a Spanish playwright, screenwriter, film director, novelist and poet. Arrabal was born in Melilla, Spain, but settled in France in 1955. Arrabal has directed seven full-length feature films; he has published plays, novels, poetry collections, chapbooks, artist's books, and several essays.

Acting credits

Trap poster
4.7

A genuine performance film as Bernadette Laffont and Bulle Ogier engage, with reckless abandon, in a flurry of senseless destruction in a house at night. Somewhere between a hallucination and a nightmare. Both the explosive soundtrack and narration that accompanies the mayhem was provided by François Tusques.

Trap

1970

Avida poster
5.8

The kidnapping of a plump billionaire's dog by a deaf-mute and 2 ketamine addicts goes wrong. The wealthy woman takes advantage of the situation to make them fullfil her last wishes.

Avida

2006

Avec Mariola poster
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Avec Mariola

1987

La Traversée du désir poster
5.7

What was your first desire? What did you long for most? Arielle Dombasle put these questions to a wide circle of famous people.

La Traversée du désir

2009

Lire poster
6.2

Lire is a cinematographic series of filmed portraits that shows, in a single large fixed and sound sequence shot of 3 minutes 20 seconds, a writer reading the beginning of his last published book.

Lire

1986

Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? poster
6.5

A model tells a television crew about her dreams of a life with prince charming all while fending off the lecherous advances of a horde of men.

Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?

1966

Amours décolorées poster
NR

Amours décolorées is a cinematographic poem to the glory of Mariola San Martin, model, stylist, dancer and Spanish photographer.

Amours décolorées

1998

Couple poster
NR

Couple is a cinematic series of portrait films, which show two persons, who free to do what they wish, in a fixed camera shot of 3:20 minutes.

Couple

1986

Cinématon poster
4.9

Cinématon is a 156-hour long experimental film by French director Gérard Courant. It was the longest film ever released until 2011. Composed over 36 years from 1978 until 2006, it consists of a series of over 2,821 silent vignettes (cinématons), each 3 minutes and 25 seconds long, of various celebrities, artists, journalists and friends of the director, each doing whatever they want for the allotted time. Subjects of the film include directors Barbet Schroeder, Nagisa Oshima, Volker Schlöndorff, Ken Loach, Benjamin Cuq, Youssef Chahine, Wim Wenders, Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Samuel Fuller and Terry Gilliam, chess grandmaster Joël Lautier, and actors Roberto Benigni, Stéphane Audran, Julie Delpy and Lesley Chatterley. Gilliam is featured eating a 100-franc note, while Fuller smokes a cigar. Courant's favourite subject was a 7-month-old baby. The film was screened in its then-entirety in Avignon in November 2009 and was screened in Redondo Beach, CA on April 9, 2010.

Cinématon

1978

The Hamburg Syndrome poster
5.6

When a plague breaks out in Hamburg, several people break out of quarantine and make their way out of the city... only to find that the plague is more widespread.

The Hamburg Syndrome

1979

The Great Chess Movie poster
7.5

In this Gilles Carle feature documentary on the game of chess, the international chess match is cast as a classic Western shoot-out. Three chess greats dominate the film: Russia's Anatoly Karpov; Viktor Korchnoi, a Russian defector; and American Bobby Fischer. Chess aficionados Camille Coudari and Fernando Arrabal analyze the personalities and strategies of the players and comment on the interplay of politics and chess.

The Great Chess Movie

1982

Arrabal the panic explosion poster
10.0

Celebration of Fernando Arrabal, 90 years old, poet, playwright, member of the transcendent body of satraps of the college of pataphysics and founder of the panic movement with Alejandro Jodorowsky and Roland Topor. With Alejandra Chulia Jordan, Arrabal specialist. With the contribution of François Naudin. Moderation Wanda Mihuléac. Caroline Corre for bibliophile books.

Arrabal the panic explosion

2023

He! Viva Dada poster
NR

Report from the second free expression festival organized at the American Cultural Center, Boulevard Raspail, in May 1965. The shows, all happenings inspired by ""théâtre panique/ the panic theater", includes Fernando Arrabal, Roland Topor and Alejandro Jodorowsky.

He! Viva Dada

1965

The Big Ceremonial poster
6.7

Fantasy is a favourite theme for directors, since it enables them to give vent to diabolical situations with unlimited licence. This film is of this category. It is the story of a jealous and protective mother who allows her son only home-made dolls to satisfy his sick fantasy. But as in all fairy stories, there comes a day when a real, warm girl enters the sheltered life of the son. His natural and innate thirsts for oddities soon make him repeat on the girl what, until then, he has been doing with the dolls. The story then evolves into a fight of wills between the mother and the girl.

The Big Ceremonial

1969

No artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Arrabal

1969

No artwork available
NR

Documentary about the filmmaker Fernando Arrabal.

Arrabal, Panik Cineast

2007

Underground and Emigrants poster
7.0

In this film, outspokenly homosexual filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim has documented his encounters with friends in the New York "underground" arts movement, the better-known of whom are William Burroughs (who says nothing for the camera), Andy Warhol (seen in the distance) and Fernando Arrabal (who is interviewed in Spanish). The emigrants named in the title are notable Germans who left the country before World War II, such as Greta Keller and Grete Mosheim. Reviewers at the time of the film's release considered it to have been a sort of paid vacation for the filmmaker rather than a serious effort. (Clarke Fountain, Rovi)

Underground and Emigrants

1976

Le Passeur immobile poster
NR

Le Passeur immobile, which covers the year 1987, is a Booklet filmed stuck between The Days and the Nights (1986) and The Artifice and the Fake (1988). These Notebooks have been punctuating my activity as a filmmaker for about fifteen years. They are like a life parallel to my other films and film series (Cinema, Group Portrait, Read, etc.). They are also like a letter to the spectators.

Le Passeur immobile

2021

The Jodorowsky Constellation poster
6.4

This documentary depicts the filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky talking about his life, his loves, his career as a filmmaker, graphic novelist, and workshop leader, and his eccentricities including tarot reader and theatrical director during The Panic Movement. Directed by Louis Mouchet, La Constellation Jodorowsky includes a lengthy on-camera interview with Jodorowsky in Spanish with subtitles. Marcel Marceau, Fernando Arrabal, Peter Gabriel, Jean "Moebius" Giraud, and Jean Pierre Vignau make appearances discussing their various projects with the director. In addition to the interview and film clips, Mouchet features some bizarre footage from Jodorowsky’s absurdist plays in which topless women splattered with paint writhe around the stage in a theatrical production meant to represent The Panic Movement, i.e., an artistic expression in which reason cannot fully express the human experience.

The Jodorowsky Constellation

1994

L'Artifice et le factice poster
NR

"L'Artifice et le factice" is the episode that covers the period from January 1, 1988 to December 31, 1988 of my filmed Notebooks.

L'Artifice et le factice

2012

Arrabal et les Garçons poster
NR

The cinema of Benoît Delépine and Gustave Kervern is reminiscent of the one of Fernando Arrabal. This is why the two troublemakers of "Groland" invited the septuagenarian filmmaker to make an appearance in their film "Avida". This documentary, peppered with film excerpts, follows the Groland festival's progress with Arrabal as president.

Arrabal et les Garçons

2011

No artwork available
NR

Ten million German citizens were able to watch cohabiting couples, kissing homosexuals, group sex and the phallus of writer Fernando Arrabal on screen for the first time an hour before midnight on October 20. Eight percent of viewers rated the study, which was overloaded with porn commercials and superficial in its commentary, as "very good", 22 percent thought it was "good", a third thought it was "very bad" -- everyone was talking about it.

Obszönität als Gesellschaftskritik?

1970

Behind the camera

Fando and Lis poster
6.8

Fando and his partially paralysed lover Lis search for the mythical city of Tar.

Fando and Lis

1972

Farewell, Babylon! poster
NR

Arrabal's sixth film based on his novel from 1969 with the same name as the movie.

Farewell, Babylon!

1993

The Emperor of Peru poster
3.9

Toby and his sister Liz live with their aunt and uncle, who take in Cambodian orphan Hoang while he awaits foster placement. The trio become fast friends, and, as they explore a nearby wood, encounter a retired engineer living in an abandoned freight car. Playing off Toby's already active imagination, the kids and the engineer use the train car to make a fantastic journey to Cambodia.

The Emperor of Peru

1982

The Emperor of Peru poster
3.9

Toby and his sister Liz live with their aunt and uncle, who take in Cambodian orphan Hoang while he awaits foster placement. The trio become fast friends, and, as they explore a nearby wood, encounter a retired engineer living in an abandoned freight car. Playing off Toby's already active imagination, the kids and the engineer use the train car to make a fantastic journey to Cambodia.

The Emperor of Peru

1982

Long Live Death poster
5.9

At the end of the Spanish civil war, Fando, a boy of about ten, tries to make sense of war and his father's arrest. His mother is religious, sympathetic to the Fascists; his father is accused of being a Red. Fando discovers that his mother may have aided in his father's arrest. Sometimes we witness Fando imagining explanations for what's going on; sometimes we see him at play, alone or with his friend Thérèse. Oedipal fantasies and a lad's natural curiosity about sex and death mix with his search for his mother's nature and his father's fate. Will Fando survive the search?

Long Live Death

1971

Long Live Death poster
5.9

At the end of the Spanish civil war, Fando, a boy of about ten, tries to make sense of war and his father's arrest. His mother is religious, sympathetic to the Fascists; his father is accused of being a Red. Fando discovers that his mother may have aided in his father's arrest. Sometimes we witness Fando imagining explanations for what's going on; sometimes we see him at play, alone or with his friend Thérèse. Oedipal fantasies and a lad's natural curiosity about sex and death mix with his search for his mother's nature and his father's fate. Will Fando survive the search?

Long Live Death

1971

The Tree of Guernica poster
6.4

The fictional town of Villa Romero is the set upon which the events of Spain's civil war play out. Villa Romero is home to Vandale (Mariangela Melato) a witch, count Cerralbo (Bento Urago) a powerless land baron, and his four sons. Three of Cerralbo's sons are ruthless sadists who pillage the countryside, but the fourth, Goya (Ron Faber), is an artist challenging authority and the church.

The Tree of Guernica

1975

The Tree of Guernica poster
6.4

The fictional town of Villa Romero is the set upon which the events of Spain's civil war play out. Villa Romero is home to Vandale (Mariangela Melato) a witch, count Cerralbo (Bento Urago) a powerless land baron, and his four sons. Three of Cerralbo's sons are ruthless sadists who pillage the countryside, but the fourth, Goya (Ron Faber), is an artist challenging authority and the church.

The Tree of Guernica

1975

I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse poster
7.0

Running away from the police, Aden goes to the desert where he meets an uncivilized man who has a special link with Mother-Earth. He ends up by convincing the hermit to come along with him into another desert... the big town!

I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse

1973

I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse poster
7.0

Running away from the police, Aden goes to the desert where he meets an uncivilized man who has a special link with Mother-Earth. He ends up by convincing the hermit to come along with him into another desert... the big town!

I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse

1973

Car Cemetery poster
5.1

The plot is set in a post apocalyptic Junkyard where people take refuge from authority and are able to practice their fantasies and fetishes without being stopped by the police. These people are led by Emanou who is a sort of Messiah, who promises music rather than salvation.

Car Cemetery

1983

Car Cemetery poster
5.1

The plot is set in a post apocalyptic Junkyard where people take refuge from authority and are able to practice their fantasies and fetishes without being stopped by the police. These people are led by Emanou who is a sort of Messiah, who promises music rather than salvation.

Car Cemetery

1983

No artwork available
9.0

No synopsis available yet.

Jede Stunde verletzt und die letzte tötet

1963

He! Viva Dada poster
NR

Report from the second free expression festival organized at the American Cultural Center, Boulevard Raspail, in May 1965. The shows, all happenings inspired by ""théâtre panique/ the panic theater", includes Fernando Arrabal, Roland Topor and Alejandro Jodorowsky.

He! Viva Dada

1965

Borges: A Life in Poetry poster
NR

A peculiar portrait of the Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) drawn by the extravagant and original look of the Spanish writer Fernando Arrabal, who establishes a bold parallelism between Borges' work and opinions and his own creations, both literary and cinematographic.

Borges: A Life in Poetry

1998